Jojo Abot is a Ghanaian artist expressing herself through music, film/photography, literature and performance art. FYFYA WOTO, meaning New Birth – New Discovery, serves as the theme and title for her ongoing project exploring SELF as a provocative tool in the discovery, exchange and evolution of the subject of IDENTITY in relation to appropriation vs appreciation in a growing global conversation around shared space and shared identities.

Currently in NYC as a member of New Museum’s incubator program, NEW INC, Abot is preparing to go on tour with a supporting slot on the incredible legend Ms. Lauryn Hill’s tour, scheduled for fall 2017. A true global fusionist and genre bender in both sound and artistic expression, Jojo Abot is poised to take the world by storm with her uniquely coined AFRO-HYNO-SONIC sound and otherworldly perspective.

Sourena Sefati (composer/santour), Deborah Leah Ungar (clarinet) and Gregory Gutin (percussion) have combined their talents to share the music of Iran with audiences. Their repertoire highlights the special qualities of the Iranian Santour, Bb and G clarinets, and various percussion accompaniments through new arrangements of folk music as well as contemporary compositions using the dastgãh tradition.

Sourena Sefati started playing Santour at the age of eleven. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Iranian Music from University of Tehran (2002) and his Master’s degree in Iranian Music Performance from Art University of Tehran (2008). He was music instructor at Art and Elmi-Karbordi Universities in Tehran from 2008 to 2014, when he moved to the United States; he currently teaches Iranian music in Albuquerque.

A native of the Rocky Mountains, Gregory Gutin has lived in Northern New Mexico since 1992 as a musician, artist, educator and art therapist. He has worked in the Santa Fe Public Schools as a teaching artist with the Partners in Education Artworks Program for over 12 years, using both music and visual arts as a vehicle for inspiration and change.

Deborah Ungar is a pianist and multi-instrumentalist with a background in International Politics, Economics, and Sociology. She is a recognized performer and educator in the classical genre, earning degrees in piano, music theory, and music education. She has performed at world music festivals and in a variety of musical settings across the US and Europe.

Two World Music instrumental virtuosos join together for a historic tour when South African kora guitarist Derek Gripper and Indian slide guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya make their North American touring debut in 2017. Each has re-defined the styles of music possible on their instruments, inventing new playing techniques, and composing new works which bring out the full array of their talents.

Debashish is perhaps the greatest slide guitarist in India. He has, both through creating the actual design of the instrument and through his incredible talent and discipline, elevated the Hindustani slide guitar to be the highest evolution of slide guitar anywhere. Debashish’s music has musical range, physical dexterity, and emotional depth. To develop his playing, he has undergone decades of disciplined study of Indian vocal technique combined with his instrumental work. Debashish can sing perfectly in parallel with every blindingly fast melody he plays. He is an eager collaborator with an open musical mind, and has performed with a wide variety of musicians.

Derek began his formal musical training at the age of six on the violin. After studying classical music in Cape Town for the next thirteen years, he began to look further afield for musical inspiration. This search took him to India where he studied South Indian Carnatic music. On his return home he began to focus on the guitar, trying to find a new direction for the instrument. He was attracted to the use of multiple layers in the music of Oliver Messiaen, the African-influenced structures of Steve Reich, as well as to guitar arrangements of the music of J.S. Bach. Derek Gripper’s project to create an African repertoire for the classical guitar, based on transcriptions of works by some of Africa’s greatest musicians, has resulted in a growing collection of outstanding African Guitar arrangements.

Bideew Bou Bess is comprised of three brothers: Moctar, Baidy, and Ibrahima Sall. They are experienced and articulate performers with a clear sense of their place in the world’s ever-evolving music scene. In concert performances, they blend sweet vocals with savvy poetic commentary and strong traditional melodies.

Bideew Bou Bess now has their own Senegal-based production company, doing international collaborations for recordings and performances, while maintaining a busy year-round concert schedule. Their collaborations with the award-winning film production company Gelongal has produced stunning music videos, and has added to their ever-growing international audience. They are also generous social activists, regularly doing benefit concerts that address issues like malaria, health care, education and equity.

This group out of the Duke City preserves the authentic sound of the Western Swing bands of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. While many bands pay homage to Western Swing, very few are as immersed in this wonderfully sweet, evocative music as the Curio Cowboys. They bring the earliest styles of Western Swing forward, warts included, with all its quaintly rowdy and somewhat disjointed quirkiness.

So what exactly is Western Swing? Well, it was the musical backdrop of American culture west of the Mississippi, stretching from Chicago to L.A, bookending the time of FDR from the late 1920’s into the early 1950’s. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat; an amalgamation of cowboy, polka, folk, Dixieland jazz and blues blended with swing which attracted huge crowds to dance halls until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre’s decline.

But maybe Merle Travis described it best: “Western swing is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. When it escapes in all its musical glory, my friend, you have Western swing.”

DDAT has been described using those words by national media for good reason. Blending Def-i’s intelligent and poetic words and hip hop style with the hard driving funk and jazz jams of Delbert Anderson (Trumpet), Nicholas Lucero (Drums), Chris Bidtah (vocals) and Mike McCluhan (Bass)—DDAT has carved their own path with their desert forged influences and world class musicianship.

All of the members are touring artists both nationally and internationally. One impromptu group performance at a festival sparked the fire that has burned across the country and is now known as DDAT.

DDAT combines hip hop, jazz, funk and soul to their original southwestern feel and genre. Performances by DDAT are known to be full of energy and excitement. Audiences never know what to expect… dancing, improvisation, audience participation, live painting—sky’s the limit at a DDAT show! DDAT creates a unique exciting tie with audiences of all ages who appreciate live performing arts. Music from the quartet has been heard all over the world with features on National Public Radio (NPR), Sirius XM, Indian Country Today, SAY Magazine, Weekly Alibi and many more. DDAT tours include several West Coast Tours, Canada’s Music is Medicine Tour, Aboriginal Music Week Tour in Canada, and Van’s Warped Tour-USA.

ENGINE is a powerful musical and theatrical act, based on two dancing guitars and a harmonica overlapped by the raw blending of three actor-musicians’ voices. The songs are a weave of Latin American rhythms, rich harmonies and rock dynamics, interspersed by simple yet powerful theatrical eruptions. The protagonists sing ceaselessly and dance scandalously, sometimes on stage and sometimes in the audience. ENGINE, the invisible machine, provides the concert’s rhythm. People may wonder: how can just three people create such a sublime mess?

For over four years, Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez (Argentina) and Robin Gentien (France) have been traveling the world sharing various musical and theatrical performances. They have also been teaching, exposing themselves to a multiplicity of cultures and communities, and incorporating all their experiences into their art and craft. In 2016, they were joined by Pierre Lauth-Karson (France), creating the final cog in the ENGINE.

The heart of the trio’s music flows from their guitars with a rock energy, a funky groove, blues, flamenco and Latin rhythms. This flow also breathes through the harmonica with unexpected brass sounds, Argentinian bandoneon colors and Texan desert imagery, as well as through the three voices calling and answering each other in Spanish, English, French and Italian. This fiercely entertaining concoction is composed of beautiful poems and ironic yet profound reflections that are alternately sensitive, relevant and timely. The audience gets carried along with the flow, having no choice but to listen, dance, clap, laugh and be touched by ENGINE.

While Samantha Fish is well known as a purveyor of blues, having been lauded by such legends as Buddy Guy, the Royal Southern Brotherhood and Luther Dickinson, her real love is simply raw, scrappy rock and roll. “I grew up on it,” she insists. “Working with Luther on my last album further instilled that spirit in me. It made me realize just how much that basic, unfettered sound means to me, and how well it ties into soul music, R&B, country and so many other forms of music that are essential even today.”

Growing up in Kansas City, Fish switched from drums to guitar at the tender age of 15. She spent much of her time in local watering holes listening to visiting blues bands. Samantha caught the attention of Ruf Records, which subsequently released her album, Girls with Guitars, which found her co-billed with Cassie Taylor and Dani Wilde. That led to her forming her own trio and recording three more albums, Runaway (2011), Black Wind Howlin’ (2013) and Wild Heart (2015), and winning an award for Best Artist Debut at the 2012 Blues Music Awards in Memphis. Her latest album, Chills & Fever, features covers of songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s—indelible melodies from the pens of legends like Jackie DeShannon, Jerry Ragavoy, Bert Berns and Allen Toussaint—and is best described as a pure slab of rocking rhythm ‘n blues.

Hong Sung Hyun is a Korean traditional musician who plays Janggu (Korean traditional percussion). Chobeolbi is Hong’s musical project which presents his collaborative works with various musical instruments.

“Chobeolbi” means “welcome rain,” and it represents his work, which aims to soak the parched hearts of modern people living in a harsh world. In this project, Korean percussion moves beyond a supporting role to take center stage as a melodic instrument in its own right, collaborating with others as well as playing its own melody. The work is based on the original music of the East Coast Shamanism: “the wind that blows from the east, the cool rain that falls,” expressing the shape of nature.

Blokes in black coats and boots, with rows of cartridges on their chests, long knives on their belts. Not an invasion force, but singers. Gorgeously rich, shifting blocks of improvising harmony, sometimes with wild, crowing falsetto over the growling basses and soaring tenors.

As Georgian culture has become more city-centered and pop-influenced, its unique polyphonic singing has been seen as threatened, and it’s on UNESCO’s list of Oral and Intangible Masterpieces of Humanity. A new wave of singers are embracing it, including the vocal group Iberi (in ancient times Georgia was called Iberia), who perform songs from across Georgia’s ten regions.

Singing for them isn’t just dramatic and intense stage performance, it’s a social thing; at the long table of a supra, a feast that’s at the centre of Georgian life, the many courses and Georgian wine just keep on coming, and so do the toasts and songs: work songs, carols, hymns, love songs, historical ballads, a praise song for the 12-13th century Queen Tamar (so powerful she was canonized by the Georgian Orthodox church as King Tamar), and very old songs from the pre-Christian era.

Pascuala Ilabaca is a leading light of the new breed of exciting young Chilean singer-songwriters. Her music is rooted in traditional sounds, but also incorporates shades of jazz, pop and rock, drawing on global influences from places as diverse as India and Mexico. Almost always armed with her accordion, Pascuala has an incredible voice, too, and her band, Fauna, provide her with the perfect accompaniment.

Born in Valparaíso in 1985, Pascuala Ilabaca has had a lifelong passion for music—always blending the traditional folk of her country with her love of the music and rhythms of India especially. In 2016, Pascuala received the Pulsar, the most important Chilean music award, for her album Rey Loj.

Betsayda Machado is a Venezuelan singer born in El Clavo, Barlovento, a community with a rich Afro Venezuelan tradition. Barlovento’s inhabitants today are descendants of African workers who once toiled in the cocoa fields, and were exploited by land owners in the area. Nicknamed “The Black Voice of Barlovento,” Betsayda has been recognized since the age of seven as the most promising voice in the area by local leaders, and has become the carrier of a long tradition of nearly-extinguished genres of black music in Venezuela. Betsayda moved to Caracas in her early twenties, for the last few years has been acknowledged as an icon of Afro Venezuelan music, receiving attention from the media and others.

La Parranda El Clavo is the local percussion and voice ensemble of El Clavo. For nearly 30 years, they have been playing together for town festivities, funerals, new year celebrations and get-togethers as a way of sharing culture and community with their family, friends and neighbors. Betsayda started her career singing with them in the late 1980s.

Nacha Mendez’s music is an expression of her curiosity, her varied experience and restless passion for living. It refuses to fit neatly into any one genre, fearlessly drawing on a wide range of influences to expand the definition of Latin music. Yet filtered through her powerful voice, these various threads come together in a single unified expression.

Mendez grew up in the tiny border town of La Union, in southern New Mexico, where she began singing and playing the guitar at an early age. She learned traditional ranchera canción from her grandmother and performed in border towns near El Paso with her cousins, the Black Brothers, sons of ex-Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black. She went on to study classical voice and electronic music at New Mexico State University before moving to New York, where she studied flamenco guitar with Manuel Granados of the music conservatory of Barcelona, Spain.

Mendez received a National Endowment for the Arts award and a fellowship from Mutable Music in New York. In 2011, she was honored by the New Mexico committee of the National Museum of Women Artists. She was voted best female vocalist in Santa Fe in both 2009 and 2010; best family-friendly entertainer at the Santa Fe Human Rights Alliance 2012 Pride Alliance Awards; and in 2013, she was awarded the best Latin production at the New Mexico Music Awards. She performs under her grandmother’s name, Nacha Mendez, touring regionally with her band, playing her original, eclectic pan-Latin-style songs. She also paints and sculpts and exhibits her work in Santa Fe. Her latest project is Love Letter to Frida, a music and spoken word homage to Frida Kahlo.

Nortec Collective Presents Bostich + Fussible are multi-Grammy- and Latin Grammy-nominated electronic music pioneers, whose most recent album, Motel Baja, is the final album in a three-album journey, for which they’ve toured the world multiple times. The group emerged from a burgeoning electronic scene in Tijuana, Mexico and invented a new style of music they dubbed “nortec”—a fusion of norteno (“from the North”) and techno. Documenting the collision between contemporary electronic sounds and traditional Mexican musical forms, they paved the way for a new generation of producers and DJs who have reinvented dance music from a global perspective.

Born and raised on the White Mountain Apache reservation in the Whiteriver community of North Central Arizona, Joe Tohonnie Jr. draws inspiration for performing from his culture. His grandfather, Stacey Classey, was a medicine man who sang traditional Apache songs, while his father Joe Tohonnie Sr. shared traditional Navajo songs with him.

Both Apache and Navajo influences of songs have brought Tohonnie Jr. full circle to find his own personal voice. In honor and respect of these two tribal influences he chose to find a peaceful resolution instead of conflict. In addition, Joe’s Dzilth Ligai White Mountain Apache Crown Dancers are his family; they protect him in many ways. It is with great respect that they honor their traditional values and their integrity with who they are and what they represent.

Joe has been honored by accepting invitations from the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the 2002/2003 Gathering of Nations Powwow in Albuquerque, NM, and the Santa Fe Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Joe is well on his way to crossing tribal barriers that may have divided us, but in the end only bring us closer to who we are.

Trad.Attack! has turned the Estonian music scene upside down by bringing traditional music to the big stages, building a modern world around its archaic sounds. It is often said that the band, with its three members, sounds so big that you would think there are many more people onstage.

They take traditional songs—sometimes starting with scratchy recordings of long-vanished village voices—and build pulsating rhythmic structures, creating an impressively big sound from acoustic 12-string guitar, drums and an array of whistles, bagpipes and jew’s harps.

All three band members grew up with music around them and each had been active on the Estonian music scene for more than 15 years before they started Trad.Attack! in 2014. In the beginning it was meant to be just simple, fun and experimental. Surprisingly for the band, their first tune, “Kooreke,” became a hit in Estonia. Since then, the band has received 14 Music Awards in Estonia, released their debut album AH!, been recognized internationally, and toured in over 30 countries from China to Canada, including significant showcase festivals as WOMEX, Eurosonic and Transmusicales. They’re still a bit surprised about their success, but definitely having lots of fun.

Trio Da Kali unites three outstanding musicians from the Mande culture of southern Mali who come from a long line of distinguished griots (hereditary musicians). Formed of voice, balafon and bass ngoni, the Trio aim to bring a contemporary twist to ancient and neglected repertoires.

Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, daughter of the legendary griot singer Kassé Mady Diabaté, is the Trio’s vocalist. Her rich, expressive voice and her natural vibrato have brought comparisons with Mahalia Jackson, America’s great gospel singer. The Trio’s musical director is master balafonist Lassana Diabaté. One of Mali’s most astonishing musicians, Lassana has recorded and toured with many of West Africa’s foremost artists, including Toumani Diabate’s Grammy-Award nominated Afrocubism album and Symmetric Orchestra project. The youngest member of the Trio is bass ngoni player Mamadou Kouyaté. Still in his mid-twenties, the eldest son of world-renowned Grammy nominated ngoni player Bassekou Kouyaté brings a contemporary feel to the traditions he has learned from his father.